Thorp Air Command - T18.net

These are great little XC scooters. And pretty good fighting machines too!
Cubes

TH accomplished another out and back. Was invited to a friend's for a 4th of July party. Flew over Saturday to assist in Party set up. Was rewarded by being able to have the airplane in a hangar both nights. Left early this am to get home before the rain kicked in again. At 6500 feet, 2500 rpm and 24 inches MP was showing 162kts True.

I've been able to collect more performance points over the last few months as TH has made a trip to Wisc (not Oshkosh) and east to St Augustine. On both trips I've been able to get to 7500 and 8500 feet. At those altitudes I'm still able to get 82% calculated power. The fuel burn is a little higher as the cylinder head temps on #2 rose to 400 degrees. I found that the front baffle material had blown forward and I lost my efficient cooling. I've made new baffles - an inch longer and that should solve that issue.
But back to performance. With 2500 rpm set and 24.5 inches at 7500 feet, my GRT display shows 164 knots true @ 8.9 mph. I'll lean more aggressively now that my baffles are happy and see what better fuel numbers look like.

Follow the Lycoming manual on leaning. Do not listen to self promoting yahoos!
Cubes

caught flying....

The GoPro wing tip mount is working well. I call this photo- hiding in plane site. Spelling intentional

Its been almost a year since 218TH went to its new home. Unfortunately, it suffered a low speed landing incident on Sept 2. That lead to the insurance company totaling the airplane as it involved a prop strike. A salvage company put her up for auction and I've spoken with the new owner a few weeks ago. I gave him some pointers on how TH is set for dropping the wing center section. I had ventilation, pitot and molex connectors ahead of the spar.
He's got a good plan to get the work accomplished and plans to have it back flying in the spring. This guy has good connections in the KC area with Ron Hayes. After this mishap, it would be nice for TH to be incident free for the foreseeable future.....but that's out of my control.